


Get Through Me

by kineticallyanywhere



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), Supergirl (TV 2015), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: BAMF Cisco, Barry POV, Cisco vs Everybody, Cisco's insecure about having these powers, Friends vs Friends, Gen, but he's not happy about it, some friendly sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 12:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13248123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kineticallyanywhere/pseuds/kineticallyanywhere
Summary: The league faces the threat of the Hound of Mordeth on Earth-1. Even with their combined strength, however, the league’s biggest cheerleader - Cisco - won’t agree to let them take the Hound head-on. The rest of the league tries to tell Cisco he’s being paranoid, but Cisco is convinced they’ll be walking to their deaths.Cisco tells them that if they want to fight the Hound, they’ll have to get through him first.





	Get Through Me

**Author's Note:**

> So this ficlet jumps right into what would be one scene in a much larger crossover that I really don’t feel like writing, so here are some more Notes on the Setting: Cisco and Cynthia have been off-earth for a while, “dealing with a problem”, and when they come back Cisco calls for all hands on deck. A powerful foe known only as “The Lady Mordeth” has been laying claim to the multiverse, one world at a time, and her right hand man, the Hound, just arrived on Earth-1. Little is known about the Hound, but Breacher tells them that he possesses all the same abilities as himself, Cynthia, and Cisco, but he wields that strength with the vigor and skill of Breacher in his prime and with a total disregard for life.
> 
> (As much as I crave Mordeth/Hound content, they’re not actually in this scene, they’re just the inciting incident.)
> 
> Teams Flash, Arrow, Legends, and Supergirl join up at the hall where they united to fight the Dominators to work out a plan. Between them, Cisco and Cynthia have had a headache of a time vibing on the Hound’s location, but they finally manage to pin him down. Rather than go into a full assault right away, Cynthia and Amaya go in for some recon, just to get a better read on Mordeth’s plans for Earth-1. All the members of the league (as I will refer to them, because let’s be honest with ourselves here) present in the hall monitor their progress behind Felicity and Winn at the keyboards. Cisco is obviously there, and so are Barry, Kara, Oliver, Sara, Wally, Jesse, J'onn, Mick, Jax, Stien, Nate, Ray, Curtis, Rene, Dinah, and Thea. (I wrote this before e-X, and Arrow s6.)
> 
> Anyway here's wonderwall

“I’m going out there,” Barry decided and turned to walk toward the front doors.   
  
Cisco, still mostly distracted by the monitors said, “Okay.” Then he processed what had been said and did a double take, “Wait, what?”   
  
“They’re gonna need backup,” Barry paused and turned to explain. He wasn’t sure why he had to explain it. “If what Breacher said about this Hound guy is true - that he destroys  _worlds_? Not that I don’t believe in her Cisco, but if Cynthia said herself she couldn’t beat this guy then I don’t think Amaya alone is going to be enough to help her win.”  
  
“That’s why they’re not gonna fight him,” Cisco said in his “you’re not five, why do I have to say this” voice. “Cindy just has to get far enough away to open a breach, then they can get back here and we can come up with a real plan.”  
  
“What if they don’t have a choice?” Wally asked. He walked over from the main group to join them. “I’m coming, too. We know where they are, so we can carry them out, then Cindy doesn’t have to worry about getting to a safe distance.”  
  
Barry nodded his ascent to the idea. Cisco had seemed strangely on edge since this whole thing had started. Wally’s was an escape plan, so surely Cisco could agree with it; and if they happened to get a few hits in while they were escaping? Well, no plan ever really panned out accordingly, right?   
  
Cisco wasn’t calming though. He was halfway through a head shake and about to open his mouth when Kara spoke up. She said, “Why not let some of the rest of us tag along? We finally know where the Hound is. We outnumber him. Let’s get him out of the picture right now. Then we can focus on Mordeth.”  
  
Some of the others were starting to agree but Cisco pointed directly at Kara and said, “No. No we cannot. Barry.” He took Barry by the elbows and spun them so he was between Barry and the exit. “Please, just… They’ll be back soon, we just have to wait. You  _can’t_  just go fight him.”  
  
Barry was too baffled to respond right away. Cisco had pulled out the puppy eyes that Barry wasn’t even sure Cisco realized he had. What was he so desperate for?   
  
“Why not?” Sara cut in loudly. “This is why we came together isn’t it?”  
  
Cisco was completely unwavering. He blinked and the puppy eyes were gone. “We came together so we’d be able to make a  _plan_. So we could  _strategize_. Not go in guns blazing to take down someone who would probably kill us even  _with_  a plan.”  
  
Barry was too stunned to make a retort. Cisco was usually the unwavering pillar of support. Cisco always believed that Barry - and Oliver and Kara and Jax - could do anything. Well, not anything, but whenever he shot down an idea Barry could at least see where he was coming from. Now though?   
  
Kara voiced what Barry was thinking. “Uhm, what team are you looking at?” she asked and stepped forward to stand by Barry. She was smiling but her confusion was evident. “Because I see two super powered aliens,  _three_  speedsters, at least five other shades of metahumans, a body builder’s club, and a bunch of geniuses.” She finished with a laugh. “I think we can handle whatever gets thrown at us.”  
  
Cisco seemed, if at all possible, even more stressed out than before. He shuffled like something was on the tip of his tongue but his eyes kept dancing over the small crowd of spectators behind Barry, Wally, and Kara.   
  
When Oliver stepped over to join them it was with less fanfare and he spoke with more control. “Cisco,” he said tightly. “How much more do you know that we don’t?”  
  
Cisco’s eyes darted away only for a moment but it didn’t get past Barry. His hands hit his sides; defeated, but frustrated by it. “I told you he has the same powers as me?”   
  
Barry shared confused looks with the people standing next to him, but they nodded.

“Barry, Wally, you guys know I don’t play myself up. This guy? Doesn’t play himself  _down_. Not even a little bit.” To Kara he said, “What team do I see? I see a team of my kickass friends, ready to save the world.” He smiled as he said it and looked around at all of them, but that smile dropped as he continued. “But  _he_  sees eyesores,” he said in the direction of Kara’s team, “wanna-bes,” to the Legends, “kindling,” to team Arrow, “and toys,” to Wally and Barry. Barry looked for the humor and the sarcasm, but there wasn’t an ounce of amusement on his face.   
  
Cisco really didn’t think they could do it.   
  
Kara wasn’t amused either. “So he’s full of himself. We can take him.”  
  
Cisco looked dismayed. “What? No–”  
  
“It’s not like he’s got super speed,” Wally added. He pounded his fists together. “We can be in and have him down before he even sees us coming.”  
  
“Wally, that’s part of the prob–”  
  
“Cisco, what’s your deal today?” Barry finally asked. He hesitated to keep talking in front of everyone, but he did anyway. “Look, I… I know you’ve always been afraid of your powers, but it’s not like we don’t know what we’re running into.”  
  
Cisco barely seemed to hear him. “No, you don’t  _get it_!” After the burst of shouting he seemed to cool down a few notches, like he just realized how worked up he was getting. Cisco’s hands moved to cover his face and he took a moment to turn and step away a few paces. While Barry decided to give him a moment, he realized some other members of the team - Sara, J'onn, Digg, Nate, Jax - had stepped closer to the conversation.   
  
When Cisco stopped he was half-turned a few paces away and had slid his hands together. He looked out over his finger tips for a few seconds and sucked in a slow breath. Then he said, “Okay.”  
  
Barry and the others glanced at each other. They seemed to silently vote Barry as spokesperson. “Okay?” he said warily.   
  
Cisco swung to face them fully. “You wanna fight the Hound of Mordeth? Good.”   
  
Barry was about to get his hopes up when Cisco reached into the back of his jacket and pulled out his goggles.   
  
“But I’m not at all interested in watching you all get yourselves killed. So you can go.” He slid his goggles on and the lenses lit up. “But you have to get through me first.”  
  
Everyone looked at each other unsure of how to react. Near the back of the group Mick actually huffed a laugh. “Sure, kid.”  
  
Sara had a quirk to her lips, too. “You can’t be serious.”  
  
“Do I look like I’m laughing right now.” He pointed to his own frown. “Is this a fun face?”   
  
While they were talking, Barry caught sight of Wally slipping his cowell on. He made eye contact with someone over Barry’s shoulder. Before Barry could turn to see who it was, Kid Flash was running. He only saw what happened next because of his own speed.   
  
Cisco had seen their move coming. Before Wally was even finished nodding to his accomplice, Cisco was lifting his arms. Wally and Jesse ran in wide arcs around either side of him, but that was the extent of their caution. As a result, they both got hit at once.   
  
Cisco’s blasts stopped them both in their tracks, the disruption of their speedforce pausing them like videos. Barry took half a step back, stunned. He’d heard that Cindy had done something like that to Wally when she’s first arrived, but Barry hadn’t understood what they’d meant. He knew a vibe blast was painful, and a continuous one was immobilizing, but Wally and Jesse were stock-still. He knew he’d missed a bit while he was in the speedforce, but he didn’t realize Cisco had picked up that skill.   
  
Cisco held them both while he said, “You guys act like having the most speed is the end-all of a fight. Everything’s got a weakness.”  
  
With an additional flick to his wrists Wally and Jesse were both sent flying.   
  
Barry felt the league behind him flinch. He caught Sara shifting into a stance - offense or defence he couldn’t tell. Before anyone could make a move Barry held out his hands and took a gentler step forward, saying, “Woah, hold on.”   
  
No one made a move. No one relaxed. Cisco took a half step back and held a defensive hand up to Barry, but Barry didn’t hear the energy charge that signaled that Cisco was ready to fire. “Barry…” he said carefully.   
  
Wally and Jesse were okay. They were hauling themselves to their elbows, at normal speed. Barry didn’t have time to check if their speedforce was okay. He focused on Cisco. “Cisco, stop,” he said calmly. He stepped forward until Cisco’s hand rested on the emblem of his suit. The emblem Cisco had made himself. “I know the last thing you want to do is hurt anyone.”  
  
Barry couldn’t see Cisco’s eyes behind the goggles, but he could see him swallow. He could feel his hand trembling. He wondered if Cisco could feel how fast Barry’s heart was beating.   
  
“The last thing I want…” Cisco finally said. His voice shook as he continued, “is to see any of you killed. You don’t understand what it is you want to fight. That’s  _my faul_ t.” He exhaled and his resolve seemed to solidify. “We’re all here to keep each other alive. It’s time I pull my own weight.”  
  
Cisco’s back hand started to raise and Barry sped up his perception. Everything slowed to a crawl; it gave him time to plan. He could hear the buzz of Cisco’s blast charging, which meant it was already too late to stop it from firing. Barry would need to make sure either that it aimed away from the crowd of people or that he could move them out of the wa–   
  
vvvVRR _RAM_  
  
With the force of a truck, Barry was knocked out of speed-perception and across the room. There was a shout that may or may not have come from himself and then he was skidding across the warehouse floor. Barry had been tossed around a hundred times, but getting a direct hit from Cisco’s hand, which had been pressed directly against his chest, was something else. It could only be a miracle that the wind wasn’t knocked out of him entirely, though he did gasp for a breath.   
  
Only a moment into hauling himself from the ground, Kara hit the concrete next to him with an “ _uff_!” She recovered much faster and whipped her hair out of her face. “You okay?” she asked him.   
  
“I - I’m not sure,” he told her. The room was spinning, but not because it was actually spinning and not from hitting his head. Every time he tried to call on his speed to help his recovery, the floor seemed to tilt another 90 degrees.   
  
It took another moment to register that the roaring he was hearing wasn’t just coming from his head. He gave up on pulling out any Speed, and his stomach began to settle. Kara had gotten to her feet again by the time Barry could look up.   
  
Mick Rory had pulled out his heat gun. The roaring Barry heard was coming from the torrent of fire that streamed in Cisco’s direction. The others had scrambled back out of the way of the heatwave.   
  
Barry wanted to shout at him to stop, but it wasn’t necessary. Cisco was holding back the flames with a single-handed blast. He hadn’t budged from his starting position. Sparks of Mick’s fire barely made it into his personal space before blinking out. Sara shouted something at Mick, but she was on the other side of the flames and Barry couldn’t hear what it was. He’d looked up just in time to catch Cisco starting to move.   
  
The rings from his defensive blast widened just enough for Cisco to shoot a second blast with his other hand right down the middle. This one was small and concentrated and shot through the fire like a bullet. The stream fell apart in its wake and then so did the gun. Mick let go and jumped back as his weapon broke into chunks of metal and silver dust. (Barry couldn’t remember the resonant frequency of tungsten, but he did remember a week of Cisco committing it to memory. “Just in case.”)

“What the hell?” Mick shouted.   
  
“I built that gun, man!” Cisco shouted back. “You seriously think I’d let you shoot me with it?”   
  
“You didn’t build this!” Curtis taunted from Barry’s left. He lobbed one of his T Spheres at Cisco.   
  
Whatever setting Curtis had set it to, they never got to find out. Cisco blasted it mid-toss and suddenly the air was filled with screeching. The sphere kissed the ground, hard, as everyone covered their ears. Barry noticed several of the others tearing out comms pieces.   
  
After a few seconds it stopped.   
  
“Okay first: ow,” Felicity said into the ringing silence from her chair by the computers.   
  
“Second,” Winn pitched in from his own seat, “all wireless signals just went down.”  
  
Curtis clapped his hands and shuffled awkwardly. “Welp. That’s what  _I’ve_  got.”  
  
“I’m not done yet,” Kara decided. She blasted off from the ground next to Barry with a  _bam_.  
  
Kara’s flight path shot slightly to Cisco’s left, like she was making for the doors, but her path was suddenly blocked. With a broad swiping motion, Cisco pulled open a breach.   
  
“Kara!” J'onn shouted.   
  
Unable to slow down in time, Kara shot right through it. Cisco swiped his arm back and the breach closed. Without missing another beat, he turned on his heel and shot two blasts back toward the doors. They both nailed their targets; Rene and Dinah were pushed back off their feet. They tumbled across the ground before being stopped by the walls on either side of the door. They must have tried to make a break for the exit themselves, to cross the goal line.   
  
If an exit portal opened to release Kara, it wasn’t anywhere in the building.   
  
Barry finally got to his feet. “Cisco,” he called, “what are you doing?”   
  
No one seemed to hear him. Oliver and Thea drew their bows.   
  
“Last chance, Cisco,” Oliver warned him from the tail end of an arrow.   
  
But Cisco was done talking. He faced Oliver down without flinching, which was something Barry himself could never pull off. He’d never realized how intimidating Cisco’s goggles made him; they hid his eyes completely. On top of that, unfortunate experience of being on the other end of Cisco’s highly reserved silent treatment made Barry’s read on the mood even worse. Cisco never stopped talking without a good reason.   
  
Oliver waited a full ten seconds. It stretched on forever - Sara and Digg exchanged looks, Dr. Stein stepped closer to Jax, Ray slipped a hand into his jacket pocket for a metal case - and it was over in a heartbeat. Cisco made a familiar popping motion with his hand and Thea’s arrow sprang forward in response.   
  
Before the arrow could make impact, the breach opened in its path, about the size of a dinner plate. Thea’s arrow sailed right into it. Barry thought it would simply vanish like Kara had but then he heard a  _snap–hissss_  and Rene, who had been halfway to his feet, was covered toes to neck in quickly hardening pink foam. Thea’s arrow was buried in the ground at his feet.   
  
Oliver’s own bow string sprung, there was a flash of blue light, and Thea was wrapped in steel cables. She’d barely hit the floor before Mick charged. Barry wanted to Flash in to intercept him - this was crazy! - but only made it two feet before taking a knee. Something was seriously wrong with his speed, making the world spin and his head turn, like some connection was broken.   
  
Mick didn’t get much further. He made it about 10 feet away before Cisco nailed him in the chest with a blast and he fell back. Then Nate pounced and grabbed Cisco under the arms from behind and put his head in a lock, arms solid steel.   
  
“Grab his goggles!” Felicity called.   
  
Curtis sprang forward. Just before he got in too close, Cisco jumped up against Nate and kicked Curtis in the gut. Curtis didn’t go down, but Nate got pushed back a step - right into an open portal on the floor. Curtis stumbled, reaching forward but Nate and Cisco both dropped through and disappeared –   
  
– and reappeared right over Curtis’s head. Nate’s back collided with Curtis’s and they all dropped to the concrete floor. Cisco, his own fall broken by Nate, rolled to his feet just in time to redirect another arrow from Oliver. Two blue flashes and then Nate and Curtis were caught in the arrow’s net in his stead.   
  
Meanwhile, J'onn helped Barry back to his feet. “I can’t access his mind,” J'onn said.   
  
“He must have added anti-telepathy tech to his goggles,” Barry realized. “We had a run in with a gorilla.”  
  
J'onn quirked an eyebrow but didn’t take the time to ask.   
  
Wally had gotten to his feet. It seemed he’d given up on trying to use his own speed, and charged toward Cisco at the same time as Oliver, Sara, and Diggle.   
  
“You must know his weakness,” J'onn said.   
  
Cisco brought his hands in close, spread his feet, and then pushed his arms wide. A bright, blue, 360 degree pulse tossed Oliver, Sara, Diggle and Wally off their feet at once. Nate and Curtis’s tangled pile got pushed away, too. Cisco remained where he’d started, in the center of the space.   
  
Barry shook his head. “I…” He hadn’t even been sure Cisco could do that pulse thing. He’d never seen Cisco fight like this. He didn’t know he could aim a breach so effortlessly. Didn’t know he could react so quickly. He didn’t know how much more Cynthia had taught him.   
  
Cisco stood stock-still in the middle of the room while the others pulled themselves back up. Nate and Curtis argued as they struggled in the net. Cisco was rarely still, but something about that stillness was familiar. Like he was lost in his own head.   
  
Cisco jerked to attention when a new fire burst to life. Firestorm stepped forward, pouring loose flames into the air. “Alright,” Jax said, “you wanna make a play of this?”   
  
The room erupted in a blaze of heat and roar of condensed energy. Half-way between Jax’s hands and Cisco’s, solid flame butted against solid, hyper-excited, space. Energy collided and combined where the streams met, like a miniature sun. Barry couldn’t science-out what reaction might be happening at that center, but the rumbling noise made him fear an explosion.   
  
Behind Cisco, Dinah had gotten to her feet. Cisco had to hold the stalemate with both hands, there was no way he could have seen Dinah get up. No way to see her take a deep breath; and yet he still managed to throw a hand over his shoulder and open a super-gorilla-sized breach at his back before the Canary Cry could hit him. The exit portal opened in front of of him.   
  
The cry reverberated across the entire hall like a bad metal concert. Cisco stopped his own attack and Firestorm’s blast shot into the B side portal and out the A side. The physical force of Dinah’s cry went in the A side and out the B. The cry didn’t affect the fire, or vice versa, but Jax stumbled under the direct force of the cry and stopped to cover his ears. The column of flame hadn’t aimed to reach all the way across the room, but Dinah still had to cut off so that nothing but her jacket would be brushed by the fingers of the flame.   
  
Cisco, hands free, slapped the breach closed and blasted them both down in one move. By the time they hit the floor, Barry’s ears were ringing. No one else looked much better.   
  
Cisco went still again, and Barry finally realized what was happening. Barry knew skilled fighters like Oliver and Sara could predict an opponent’s moves during a fight, but Cisco was  _literally_  predicting them.   
  
“He can see the future,” Barry said aloud.   
  
He wasn’t sure he was talking to anyone other than himself until J'onn said, “What?”   
  
“Cisco can  _literally_  see the future,” Barry explained, working it out as he said it. “Every time he pauses he’s checking his own immediate future for what we’ll do next and he’s planning for it.” Oliver had landed the closest to Barry and was shaking the ringing from his own ears, but he turned when Barry called. “Oliver! You have to rush him!”  
  
Mick got tossed across the room again in Barry’s peripheral vision. Oliver gave a quick gesture Barry loosely translated as, “What the hell does it look like we’re doing?”   
  
“No- but, not even for a second!” Barry struggled to speak quickly and not explain the entirety of the concept of precognition in the middle of a fight. Cisco’s visions didn’t take place in 1:1 real time, but they did still take time. If they didn’t give him that time, he wouldn’t be able to hold up, not against trained fist fighters. “Non-stop!” he tried.   
  
Oliver rolled his eyes and it looked like he was about to shout something back but Dinah’s cry split the air again. This time, Cisco met it with both hands and a wide blast that must have hit some kind of counter frequency because the main echo stopped halfway across the room and dopplered back at Dinah.   
  
“Sara!” Oliver called over the noise. Sara had been across the room, getting Mick back on his feet, but he managed to get her attention. Oliver didn’t try to yell over the noise again. He flashed two fingers several times and then made a rolling motion with his pointer finger.   
  
Sara seemed to get the message. She nodded before telling something to Mick. At the same time, Nate and Curtis finally untangled themselves with the help of Ray. Barry had thought Ray had gone to get his suit, but he wasn’t wearing it.   
  
Dinah’s own cry shot back at her didn’t affect her like it did everyone else in the room, but Cisco’s blast did hold her off long enough that she simply ran out of breath. In the time she tried to take to inhale, Cisco knocked her down again.   
  
Barry was painfully aware of every idle second and painfully aware of having no idea what to do without his speed. He could try to rush Cisco like Wally had, but he expected he’d only get knocked back like everyone else. He could try to talk Cisco down, but he didn’t seem to be in a listening mood.   
  
Luckily, Oliver seemed to have formed some iota of a plan. Heartbeats after Dinah was down, Cisco only barely managed to dodge a taser arrow from Oliver. The arrow clipped Mick’s shoulder as he ran back in for a third try. He stumbled, but he wasn’t running by himself. Sara and her staff finally made it in close and took a swing at Cisco’s legs.   
  
Cisco was fast enough to get one foot out of the way, but the other got swept from under him. As he bent backwards to catch himself with one hand, he shot a blast with the other that tossed Sara back into Mick.   
  
Barry’s heart jumped to his throat seeing Cisco bent half backwards with Oliver and Curtis headed his way. He watched Curtis move to kick Cisco’s legs out from under him, but Cisco moved his legs first. With one twist - that reminded Barry eerily of Cynthia, and looked a lot like breakdancing - Curtis got his own legs swept out at the knee and Cisco was the one to land on his feet.   
  
As soon as he was up he crossed his arms over his head and Oliver’s bow struck down on them with a crack. Oliver’s strength beat out Cisco’s, whose defense got pushed out of the way. They both swung an arm and hit at the same time– Oliver hit Cisco’s cheek, snapping his head to the side. Cisco’s blast landed square to Oliver’s chest and he flew back twenty yards.   
  
The punch was enough to get Cisco to stagger. Barry immediately felt terrible for the spike of hope he got from someone finally landing a real hit. They must have finally run out the clock on Cisco’s last prediction.   
  
Barry was pretty sure Cisco couldn’t get a vibe in before Curtis was back up and Nate and Ray came in around opposite sides. A wide slash-like pulse pushed Ray and Curtis away, but Nate Steeled-up and held his footing.   
  
Cisco wound up a blast for Nate–   
  
Martian Manhunter appeared out of thin air and lifted Cisco off the ground from behind. Barry hadn’t even seen J'onn move from beside him, but then that was the point of turning invisible. Cisco flailed in surprise but could only kick at air. J'onn had a tight grip around his chest.   
  
Nate watched them from the ground and laughed a loud, “Ha!”   
  
Cisco blasted him in the chest from the air and he fell on his steel ass with a clang.   
  
J'onn’s grip around Cisco constricted in response. They were too high up for Barry to hear what J'onn said to Cisco, but he was close enough to read Cisco’s lips for his response:   
  
“Sorry about this.”  
  
Even from the ground, Barry heard the energy charge. Sudden as sparks, the air around Cisco glowed blue and, with a low-frequency bang, J'onn and Cisco were propelled backwards and upwards. Already well off the ground, it was barely a blink before J'onn’s back made contact with a steel rafter. Barry knew J'onn was made of sturdier stuff than humans, but Barry still winced at the strength of the impact.   
  
Barry wasn’t the only one who flinched. J'onn’s arms went limp around Cisco and they both started to fall.   
  
Barry’s heart jumped straight to his throat. On pure instinct he tried to flash forward so he could make a wind tunnel and slow their drop–   
  
Barry face-planted after he called for Speed and instead the world tipped sideways. From the floor, he heard the  _thud_  of a body hitting concrete. He snapped his face out of the dust.   
  
J'onn lay on the ground not far from Barry. He groaned and rolled over, apparently alright. Then Barry heard the buzzing.   
  
Cisco was still a dozen feet off the ground. The air pulsed around him as he staggered in the air. He dropped for a brief second - Barry thought he tasted his own heart now - and then shot pulses at the ground from his hands. He repeated that two more times before dropping the last few feet to his knees.   
  
Barry was so relieved he thought he might throw up. Or maybe that was the nausea.   
  
Oliver remembered Barry’s advice before Barry himself did. As soon as Cisco had landed, he rushed forward again to make the next move. Sara mirrored him, Diggle followed their lead.   
  
Cisco didn’t waste any time either. As soon as he was stable on his knees, he raised his hands and slammed them into the ground. Based on the earth’s reaction, his hands might have had the force of asteroids. The cement around Cisco’s hands cracked and world shifted underneath them - outside of Barry’s head this time. Everyone left on their feet fell like dominoes at the initial shockwave. The subsequent earthquake kept anyone from getting back up.   
  
It was at least a few seconds before Barry thought to start counting. Four seconds into counting, Barry really started to worry. He wasn’t  _totally_  oblivious, he knew Cisco was tied to an insane power source. But just a year ago exerting half this much energy would have Caitlin stretching her prescription powers for the next four days just to handle the migraine. Barry didn’t know how much energy it took to make an earthquake, but it had to be a lot.   
  
Five seconds…   
  
Across the room, Dinah managed to get to her elbows.   
  
Six seconds…   
  
Jax was on his hands and knees. He struggled to lift a flaming hand from the ground but seemed to be learning the rhythm of the quakes.   
  
Seven seconds…   
  
Cisco’s breaths had gotten heavy at some point. J'onn couldn’t stand, but he could push himself from the ground entirely. He’d only need a few seconds to re-orient himself once airborne.   
  
Eight…   
  
Cisco was still for a moment.   
  
Nine…   
  
Cisco let out a heavy breath.   
  
The earthquake stopped. Sara was on her feet so fast Barry almost thought it was Speed. She wasn’t quite fast enough, though. Cisco had predicted enough of the swing of her staff to grab the opposite end and strike right where it was designed to snap into two - half the staff ended up in Cisco’s control. He blocked a hit from Sara with it before tossing it over his shoulder, away from her–   
  
–and into Oliver’s grip. Cisco must not have noticed Oliver coming in from behind him. Sara and Oliver swung together and then, finally, everything stopped.   
  
Cisco stood still with half a staff held steady by either side of his neck. Oliver and Sara had stopped their strikes before making impact, but now Cisco may as well have had a sword at his throat for the damage they could still do. None of the three of them moved while everyone else helped each other to their feet. J'onn floated over to Barry to help him up again. Everyone exchanged nervous looks with each other, unsure of the potential cease-fire. Certainty seemed to grow with each passing breath in relative silence. Barry’s heart thudded against his chest.   
  
Eventually Sara asked Cisco, “You done?”   
  
Cisco, very slowly, lifted his hands - not in fists or open-palmed, but relaxed - to the sides of his head. He had to reach around the staffs, but he clicked his goggles off and slid them off his face. Then he dropped his arms to his sides. He didn’t look anyone in the eye. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m done.”  
  
The relief in the room was palpable, shoulders and guards around the room dropped like weights and Barry himself let out a sigh of relief. The tension hadn’t quite broken, though. Sara and Oliver didn’t move. Cisco stared at his feet.   
  
Ray, who didn’t have the best reputation at reading a room, grinned and let out a victory, “Whoo!”   
  
He was met by a few other half-smiles from others around the room nursing bruised shoulders and coming off the adrenaline. Ray got a fist bump out of Nate. Wally and Jesse supported each other. Dinah jogged across the room to help Diggle get Thea out of the steel cables. Others, like Oliver and Sara and J'onn, remained stoic. Barry didn’t know what to think. The fight was over, but did that mean…?   
  
“We won, right?” Ray said. “We can totally do this.”  
  
Suddenly Felicity interjected. “We got comms back on,” she announced. “Cynthia and Amaya made it to a safe distance, they’re going to head back our way soon.”  
  
“And apparently Kara’s with them…?” Winn added, baffled.   
  
Oliver’s arm dropped then. Someone might have just told him his dog had been kidnapped for how stricken and dazed he looked just then. “No, Ray,” he said. “We didn’t.”  
  
Ray’s grin faltered. He even laughed a little, like he was making sure no one else was about to tell him he was being punked. “What do you mean?”  
  
Heat burst briefly from Jax and Professor Stein as they separated. “We got him dead to rights,” Jax pointed out. “How, exactly, is that not a victory?”  
  
“Not every victory is won on the condition of combat,” Professor Stein said.   
  
“Cisco was never trying to beat us,” J'onn clarified. “only to stall us; and to prove a point.”   
  
Nate closed his eyes at the impact of a realization. “Cynthia and Amaya don’t have eyes on the Hound anymore,” he figured out aloud. “We couldn’t go into the fight now, even if we wanted to — he was stalling.”  
  
Cisco looked up only high enough so that he could lock eyes with J'onn. From Barry’s angle, he couldn’t see Cisco’s expression through his hair. After a moment, J'onn gave a calm nod and Cisco looked down again.   
  
J'onn moved over to Sara, who still hadn’t dropped her weapon, and placed a hand on her arm. “He holds no ill will,” he told her. He must have finally gotten a glimpse at Cisco’s mind. “He won’t be attacking us, again.”  
  
As if to emphasize the point, he carefully took Cisco’s goggles from his hand. Cisco let him without any protest. Not even Cisco could defend against J'onn’s powers without the technology in his goggles. Without them, J'onn would be able to stop him with his telepathy.   
  
…as far as they knew. Barry had no idea what Cisco was capable of anymore. Which shouldn’t have been anything new. Cisco’s powers had always been an enigma, but this was so much…  _bigger_  than Barry had ever expected. Between the Firefly references and the Portal jokes they hadn’t talked much about the offensive capabilities of Cisco’s powers. That had always been fine with Barry, so long as it had been fine with Cisco, but not taking the time to consider the potential on his own had been a mistake.   
  
Cisco had changed a lot over the course of their friendship. Despite that change, Barry knew, logically, that Cisco hadn’t gone through that same amount of change in the last twenty minutes.   
  
So why did it feel that way?   
  
 _It’s not that big a deal_ , Barry told himself.  _He’s just got bigger guns than we thought._  
  
( _More like rocket launchers_ , some traitorous part of him quipped. Barry’s chest was sore. There were multiple spider webs of cracks in the concrete.)  
  
Sara gave J'onn a good, hard, look. She dropped her weapon to her side.   
  
Just as quickly, Cisco dropped himself to sit cross-legged on the floor and dropped his head into his hands.   
  
“Okay…” Ray acquiesced to maybe not being on the top of their game. “But we still won the fight, didn’t we? And I didn’t even have my suit on!”   
  
“And what if you did?” Barry wondered aloud. “What if you’d been wearing it when the tech went down?”   
  
“Wanna end up like my gun, Haircut?” Mick asked. He kicked one of the left over pieces and it spun across the floor.   
  
Nate looked green. Ray visibly swallowed. “Okay, no.”   
  
“But the point still stands, right?” Curtis said. “We’re still standing– well.” He gave an apologetic gesture in Rene’s direction, where he was still stuck in a pile of hardened foam. Rene’s glare might have paralyzed lesser mammals. Curtis was apparently used to it. “For the most part, anyway. We beat Vibe. Vibe and the Hound have the same powers. By some form of the transitive property, we can beat the Hound!”  
  
“We didn’t win,” Sara said, angrily. Her glare was less intense, as if her anger was more self-focused, but she hadn’t taken her eyes off of Cisco since he sat down. “He gave up.”  
  
“There are fifteen of you,” Winn pointed out. “Do you blame him?”  
  
He and Felicity were still in their seats by the monitors, though Felicity was half out of hers. She kept a worried eye on Cisco.   
  
“Well – fifteen including Kara,” Winn amended. “Even if she did get warped halfway across the county ten seconds in.”  
  
“And how many of us would have been in the same situation in a  _real_  fight?” Oliver asked the whole room. “Nate, you fell through a portal. You could have ended up anywhere, completely separated from the team. Our number may be key to winning this fight, we can’t afford to lose anyone.”  
  
Nate rubbed the back of his neck and looked down. Ray looked like he was picking up on the anxious tension, thinking through every moment someone could have been tossed to another place - another world - during the fight.   
  
Barry watched Cisco breath. His hands were in his lap now. His head was still bowed. He took long, slow inhales, and let out shakey exhales. Barry steeled himself - metaphorically - focused as much as he could on not putting a single drop of speed into each careful step, and made his way towards his friend.   
  
“How many of us got hit?” Sara asked as he walked. She finally looked around the room.   
  
As everyone else glanced around at their teammates, Barry got the impression that more people were looking for someone who  _hadn’t_  gotten hit at least once, rather than the other way around.   
  
When no one spoke up, Sara continued, “We all know Mick got used as a punching bag–”  
  
Mick growled.   
  
“–but if just one of those hits had had the force of the blast that held up against columns of fire?” She gestured towards Jax and Professor Stein. Jax rubbed his hands together like he could still feel the force of what she was suggesting.   
  
“We wouldn’t be getting back up,” Diggle concluded. “It’s like the difference between a rubber and a lead bullet.”  
  
The weight of what could have happened - what would have happened if Cisco fought like the Hound would, with intent to kill - was heavy in the room. Even Ray couldn’t quip back right away.   
  
Eventually someone else did respond, and someone responded to that, but Barry stopped listening to the conversation. J'onn let him balance on his shoulder for a moment when he - finally - made it over to Cisco. When he sat down next to him, the motion likened something between a casual folding of oneself and a dropped brick. No one called any attention to it. The debates and elaborations went on over their heads. Barry tuned it out.   
  
He sat facing Cisco’s side and so reached forward to put a hand on his shoulder. Cisco didn’t flinch, but he did turn his head to Barry. For someone who’d just gotten what he wanted, he looked awfully defeated. Perhaps seeing the heavy anxiety in Cisco’s eyes - an old emotion he recognized from far back when Zoloman was still an issue - was what stalled Barry long enough for Cisco to get the first word in.   
  
“Are you alright?” he asked Barry, quiet and a little broken.   
  
Barry shook his head in light-hearted disbelief. Cisco really was still Cisco.   
  
“I’m gonna be  _fine_ ,” he insisted. He also spoke in a lowered voice, as if to keep their position on the floor as a safe bubble, separate from the rest of the world.   
  
Cisco’s eyes fell to somewhere around Barry’s elbows. “I’m sorry,” he said so quietly that Barry mostly translated what he said via lip reading.   
  
Barry thought for a brief moment on what might have happened if Cisco hadn’t drawn the metaphorical line. If any of them had tried to land a punch on the Hound only to end up like the heat gun. Or lost on some other world. Or who knows what else.   
  
(The phrase “shattered nervous system” made an unwelcome appearance in his train of thought.)  
  
“Don’t apologize,” Barely told him, pouring as much sincerity into his voice as he could. “Woozy and slow is way better than dead.”  
  
Cisco looked back down at his hands. Barry decided in that moment that no one should look so devastated after having saved his friends lives. Which, in hindsight, was a weird thing to decide on. It should have been a given. People hardly ever faulted Oliver for what he did to keep his trainees (or future trainees) safe, and Cisco hadn’t even stabbed anybody with an arrow.   
  
“Hey.” Barry reached his hand to Cisco’s far shoulder, as if bringing him closer might get through to him. “I mean it.”  
  
Barry didn’t process the sound of clicking heels until they were right behind him. They walked around him, and Felicity sat down on Cisco’s other side. When she wrapped her arm under his and took his hand in both of hers he looked up at her, startled.   
  
“You okay?” she asked quietly, keeping with their quiet bubble from the rest of the room.   
  
Cisco just looked at her for a moment.  "Why…" Though his hair was still in the way so Barry couldn’t see his face, his short laugh spoke to confusion. “Why are you asking  _me_  that question?”   
  
“You’re the one on the floor,” she replied simply.   
  
“Yeah, bu– you just saw all that, right? And you’re afraid  _for_  me?”   
  
For its next feat today: Barry Allen’s heart would simultaneously drop like a rock and fly itself into the sun. Barry knew he’d failed a hundred times supporting Cisco’s journey with his powers, from even before Barry told him he’d be there every step of the way. Somehow he’d missed the false step that led Cisco to believe that  _his friends ought to be afraid of him._  
  
Because  _of course_  Cisco was afraid of being feared as a metahuman. Because Cisco had admitted to Barry he’d never had a real best friend before. Because Cisco had always - from Day One, Case One: Barry Allen - been quietly suspicious of every new meta’s potential to go bad. Mick Rory may not have been standing in the room with them had he not set off  _that_  chain of events. Hell, Cisco hadn’t even excluded himself from his own scrutiny. Why would he think that anyone else would exclude him from theirs?   
  
 _Of course_  Barry had never seen Cisco fight like he just had because  _of course_ Cisco wanted to come off as non-threatening. Because this league was the closest family Cisco had ever really had, and ending up on Oliver Queen’s Potential Threat Stink List was the fast-track to discord. The fastest way to end up on the Stink List was to admit yourself as an unknown quantity, which, given Cisco’s comparative lack of training yet now apparent potential, he clearly was.   
  
But it wasn’t a no-name meta that had just taken on the entire league solo. It was Cisco.  _He was wearing his otter space t-shirt._  
  
Barry knew with clear certainty he could never fear Cisco, because Cisco would never give him a reason to be afraid that would outweigh every reason Barry had to not be. He wasn’t sure how anyone else might feel, but he was relieved at Felicity’s response.   
  
She gave Cisco one of those looks she usually reserved for Oliver’s acts of Righteously Justified Absurdism and said, “Cisco. We were  _just_  talking about what we’re gonna name our cats when we’re eighty.”  
  
Still strained and quiet, and with an air of an automatic response, Cisco said, “Assuming cats are still kept as pets–”  
  
“–and haven’t bred to the point of overpopulation at which point they’ll be scavenged to feed a dying society,” Felicity continued.   
  
“Of course,” they finished together.   
  
(Barry had been privileged enough to read part of a text conversation between Cisco and Felicity once. He’d learned a lot about hard drives, ethical application of escalators, and whether or not a gejinka could be safely considered “hot” without literally being on fire.)  
  
Switching to her I’m/You’re Adorable and You’re Dumb (not that she’d ever admit to calling it that) voice, Felicity added, “What about your mangey apocalypse dog?”   
  
“Gandhi…” Cisco said forlornly.   
  
(Barry’s life would be so much darker without these two.)  
  
“Cisco, there are quite a number of things I fear in this world - including hangnails, the alt-right, and the fact that this is not the only world - but big kids like you could not possibly be one of them.” More sincerely, she said, “You’re a hero, Cisco. If we were afraid of some superpowers, we wouldn’t be here.”

Cisco bit down on his bottom lip and his eyes got all watery, but there was hope in them again. He looked like he was about to smile when a pair of boots stepped into their safe space. The bubble popped, and the room was silent. The boots followed up to Oliver’s face, which was about inexpressive as ever. Barry didn’t know what was going on in Oliver’s head - did he ever? - and had no idea what to expect. Oliver had spied on, tied up, and shot his own teammates for lesser circumstances.

He had a pretty good idea what Cisco expected, though. Cisco visibly swallowed and any hint of a smile coming on had dropped off. Barry opened his mouth to say something in Cisco’s defense, but Oliver spoke up first.

“You’ve been holding out on us,” he said.

Cisco looked like he was going to suffocate in the pause that followed. Barry squeezed his shoulder. He tried to give Oliver a look to tell him to lay off, but Oliver was only looking at Cisco.

Oliver crossed his arms. “Y’know, I got this scar from the Dominator fight last year. Felicity says it throws off the feng shui of my triceps.”

Barry turned to Felicity in confusion.

“It does,” she whispered. “My one-inch nemesis.” She spotted Barry’s baffled expression. “What?”

Wait, was that a joke? Was Oliver making a joke? It began to dawn on Barry that perhaps no one was going to get stabbed.

“You’ve had these powers for more than a year,” Oliver said, still soley addressing Cisco. It wasn’t a question, but it expected a response. Cisco hadn’t blasted any Dominators, or ninjas, or time-pirates. Even with everything Cisco could do, he still rarely ever hit the streets in costume. Barry was so used to being the solo hero, he never put much thought into it until now.

Cisco moved his mouth open and shut a few times. (“I got no spit.”) “Fighting’s… never been my thing.”

“And if it has to be?”

“Well I’m not about to sit on my ass and let my Earth blow up,” Cisco responded with surprising conviction.

Oliver smiled. “Good.” He held out a hand to Cisco. “We’re gonna need you.”

Cisco stared dumbly at Oliver for a moment. Clearly whatever he’d been expecting to happen hadn’t happened. He glanced around at everyone else in the room - too quickly to judge every person’s expression, but enough to realize no one was yelling at him or backing away or leaving or whatever scenario he’d played out in his head. Nothing was on fire, the younglings still lived, Obi-wan wasn’t claiming the high ground. Cisco looked back to Oliver. He took his arm.

Oliver helped Cisco to his feet. Before letting go, and quietly enough that Barry had to be as close as he was to hear, Oliver said, “Cisco. Thank you.”

Barry couldn’t see Cisco’s face from the floor, but his hair moved with a small nod.

Felicity, already on her feet again, thumped Barry on the shoulder. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Oh,” Barry said, snapping back into focus. He re-assessed himself. He still felt kinda wobbly inside. “Help me up?” he asked Felicity.

Felicity helped pull Barry back up with both hands. As she did, Barry said, “Hey, buddy?” and Cisco turned around. “This,” he gestured to his slow self, “is gonna wear off, right?”

The face Cisco pulled in response was not convincing. The way he said, “Yes…?” was even less so.

And then a breach ripped open in the middle of the room. Half the league flinched, and a few turned to Cisco who held his hands out. “Not me!” he insisted.

In a moment, Cynthia, Amaya, and Kara all hopped through and the breach closed behind them. Each of them held a small paper bowl and a little spoon.

“Hey, babe,” Cynthia greeted Cisco. She held up her bowl of ice cream. “We took a detour. This is  _coffee_   _flavored_. Freakin’ incredible.” She put a bite in her mouth and kept talking around it. “I mean, I know we got a thing to do, and Kara filled us in on,” she waved her spoon around the room, “on the thing, a bit, the rest I picked up fro–”

She stopped when she spotted something over Cisco’s shoulder. She pointed at it with her spoon. “Is that a man trapped in five square feet of poly-foam?” she asked.

Rene looked about ready to Hulk out. Curtis and Dinah snickered. Mick laughed out-right.

Cynthia stuck her spoon in her mouth and made a grabby-hand motion in Cisco’s direction without taking her eyes off of Rene. “Camera phone. Babe. Now.”

“If you take my picture, I will shoot you,” Rene said, loudly so his voice would carry across the room.

“You will try. You will fail. Cisco, phone.”

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer of sorts: Everything Cisco does in this fic is based on powers and abilities that Vibe or like-powered individuals have displayed either in the show or in the comics (though perhaps to more advanced extents than he’s done so far, but Cisco has been learning fast), and I am more than happy to check my receipts. There’s really only one thing he does in here that I’m iffy on his potential ability to actually do, but given the nature of comic book action/science I’m confident that it would be something that the arrowverse would be willing to put to screen. If this does become an issue for anyone, I’d be more than happy to re-write around it for you and have Cisco do something else to get the same result. Also please note that none of them are actually trying to kill each other (that would be a very different fight with way more casualties, which is a little bit The Point) so I’m aware of a lot of “well X character could have…“ arguments and my response to most of them is ‘they’re not trying to kill each other’.
> 
> special thanks to my buddies on tumblr: thenarator and hedgiwithapen for encouraging me to write this and zapiarty and blindobi-wan for encouraging me to finish


End file.
